Dark Souls 3: "True Colors"

So, remember that post I made complaining that Dark Souls III looked too monochromatic? Where at the end I suggested that maybe we only saw a very bland-looking area, and that maybe the rest of the game was more visually interesting?





Damn it.

Also, whose idea was it to use the song “True Colours” for a game that doesn’t have more than two?


It’s like they looked at Skyrim and Gears of War and said: “Ugh, these games are just too vibrant! What is this, My Little Pony?!”. I was really hoping Bloodborne was just a game with monotonous art-direction, but it looks like that blandness and de-saturation is built right into the engine.


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~A.H.

Colours And Contrast

I know this is just as annoying as that guy who was mad that Diablo III had TOO MUCH colour. As far as problems with video games go, it’s not the end of the world or anything, but it still bugs me when modern games do this. Especially when they rely on BS excuses like “it’s supposed to be dark and edgy and dark and gritty and dark and dark”. When in practice, it just makes everything look flat and uninteresting.


And yes, Dark Souls III in particular does have screenshots you can find with some colour and contrast. But I’d argue that in order to be a part of the franchise, it should really look closer to something like this:

But hey, what do I know? Maybe they’re only showing us the really bland, gray, flat-looking areas before we get to see the REAL art design… or something. But there's a reason why Fallout 4 was so colourful and had such high contrast and saturation: because Skyrim and Fallout 3 looks like a black and white picture of a turd. If people have to mod your game to make it look good, then your game's art design sucks. I don't care how many polygons you have to work with.

I was really hoping that video games had finally gotten out of its' "Gears of War, gray and gray and more gray" phase.


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~A.H.

Gears Of War 2

I have been stuck on this one part of Gears of War 2 for an hour. I have had to restart from the last checkpoint well over 15 times. It is a giant, confusing battle where you just explode sometimes, where enemies randomly become invincible and you sometimes have less health than you actually are supposed to have. No matter what weapons you have, you run out of ammo and it's never good enough anyway.

Meanwhile, your dipshit AI companion just sits behind cover not doing anything. No, you just sit tight, Dom. Let me handle the entire fucking game in what was clearly designed to be a co-operative experience. Whatever's most convenient for you. I mean, none of the enemies attack you anyway, so it's not like you matter.

The battle comes in waves. You finish off some, and then there's a pause, and then more enemies just show up... but there are no checkpoints. So when the game cheats to make you lose, you have to do it all over again. I'm surprised they don't just start you off back at the tutorial again.

Sometimes enemies don't spawn when the game tells you to kill a specific number of them. So you just lose. The game just brute forces a GAME OVER screen because it knows it fucked up, and you have to do the whole thing over again, and then fail through no fault of your own.


Oh my fucking god you guys, it is so hard to put into words just how unfair and awful this is. I've beaten Sonic 06, okay? I finished that shit. And that was less broken than Gears of War 2. This game is like fighting that bullshit Silver the Hedgehog boss fight where he can just catch you in an infinite loop without ever actually killing you, but every five minutes. There are parts where the game wants you to do a specific thing, or shoot at a specific part of a monster, and it does not fucking tell you. So you just die over and over again, making no progress at all. It offers no hints or context through any of its' visuals, it's audio or its' gameplay mechanics, and then it acts like you're the one fucking around.


It's as if they designed a campaign and enemy encounters as if you have four human players at all times, and then didn't bother to scale that down or even bother playing the single-player mode. To see if it even works. This is worse than any Halo game I've ever made fun of on this blog. This is the kind of game that deserves a Mr. Plinkett tear-down.


I think Cliffy B owes me an apology for this.


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~A.H.

The Walking Dead: "No Way Out"

I don't talk about individual episodes of tv shows here.  Hell, I don't really talk about much of anything here anymore.  But I really need to get this off of my chest.  I know I'm not breaking new ground by saying this, but the latest episode of The Walking Dead was really, really dumb.

Needless to say, there are spoilers ahead. But I honestly don't see how I could "ruin" something that already sucks.  I know you might think you understand how stupid this was. But I really need you to appreciate just how much more stupid this was than anyone thought it could be.

This wasn't just bad for a Walking Dead episode. This was such idiotic misery, I'd swear I was watching 2 Broke Girls.

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